Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of committee.
The Professional Institute welcomes the opportunity to appear before this committee. PIPSC represents 55,000 scientists, engineers, and professionals across Canada's public sector, the vast majority of whom are employed in the federal public service, including in the NRC, Natural Resources Canada, Environment Canada, science-based departments, regulatory agencies, and field research stations. They often work in close collaboration with their academic and private sector counterparts.
Their research, which is associated with the welfare and livelihood of Canadians, is of concern to Canadians. It's on the minds of Canadians--the quality of the air they breathe, the food they eat, the water they drink, and the safety of consumer products. The members and scientists of the Professional Institute work in this area every day for the public good of Canadians.
The institute applauds the decision of this committee to undertake this study and believes that a thorough review is urgently needed. Despite the unique importance of the public sector to the health and well-being of Canadians, science performed in the federal public service has increasingly been neglected in the nation's science and technology decision-making.
In the last decade, the scientific effort in Canada has shifted dramatically away from in-house government-performed scientific research to university-based research--figure 1 in your brief. In real terms, the federal gross domestic expenditure on research and development--GERD--on the federally performed research in natural science and engineering, peaked in the 1980s and has been flat ever since. At the same time, Canada has failed to improve its position in international R and D rankings. In 1995, Canada ranked tenth in the OECD in GERD as a percentage of GDP, and by 2005 it had slipped to eleventh place.
The decline comes precisely at a moment when the Canadian public relies more than ever on the vitality and unbiased authority of public science. Canadians face profound challenges in the decades to come in adapting to global warming. Canadians expect that their government will maintain the scientific capacity to understand, anticipate, and respond to challenges facing this country, including the capacity to undertake large-scale and long-term research to support scientific monitoring, prediction, and reporting. Public science is essential to this effort. Universities and the private sector are not mandated or equipped to provide sustained and secure support for this research.
Big science projects requiring large-scale investments and long-term commitments in particular need government science leadership and in-house capacity to succeed. Yet after years of in-house program cuts, scientific investigation, monitoring, and data gathering are in crisis. As scientists conveyed to the environment minister in a recent meeting, other governments are questioning Canada's science regionally and internationally. For example, steps taken to terminate the funding to the United Nations global environment monitoring system--GEMS, a world-renowned program housed in Burlington, Ontario, for 30 years, has been reduced. It raises doubts internationally about the Canadian government's commitment to scientific endeavour in the public interest. The institute's federal scientists report that the scientific capacity of the government has been and is eroding.
Given their role in protecting Canadians and their vocation in service to Canadians, scientists are understandably frustrated by their inability to serve that purpose. The quality of their work suffers from their taking on a similar or heavier workload with fewer resources. When constantly changing priorities and bureaucratic rules are thrown into the mix, an even higher number have a diminished ability to serve the public effectively.
Members tell the institute constantly of their frustrations in being unable to apply for research moneys and being deterred from collaborating with scientists in academia and the private sector. Some labs are relying on industry funding to keep the lights on.
Now members are confronted by a future of doing even more with less. The government has a full-blown staffing emergency, with over 40% turnover in many departments. Science-based departments like Fisheries and Oceans report attrition rates of 40% to 45% amongst scientific researchers in the next four years. Health Canada will need to fill 600 positions in 2008 alone.
We have some recommendations. First, public science needs to be revitalized. There is a vital need for leadership on science and technology policy. The government must act with urgency on its commitment to S and T in the public interest and reverse the decline that has been set following program review in the 1990s.
The government must restore and increase resources for scientific research in the federal government, including a strengthening of A-base funding and a reduced reliance on short-term sunset programs and term employees. It must halt the further erosion of public science stemming from the strategic review of SBDA programs and expenditures.
There must be greater support for the work of scientists and researchers in the federal public service. Canada's 21st century knowledge economy requires highly qualified personnel. But when it comes to knowledge workers, the federal government has a significant recruitment and retention problem on its hands. The accelerated rate of attrition is diminishing the federal scientific effort. The government must find ways to attract new scientists and researchers to perform highly qualified science in the public sector.
An immediate and important signal to leading researchers considering public service would be to recognize the professional autonomy of scientific researchers and safeguard the independence of scientific work. Stable funding is required. And they need unfettered access to collaborative research networks, conferences, and forums for exchange of scholarly ideas.
The government must listen to the scientific community. Scientists are eager to work with government and provide expert opinion on science-related policy. The science and technology strategy was conceived with little participation and input from the government's own national science adviser, Dr. Arthur Carty, let alone Canada's broad community of professional scientists.
Canada needs a national science adviser to bring science issues directly to the public agenda. The institute calls for the government to restore a stand-alone office of the national science adviser, with full-time staff reporting to the public and to Parliament.
In addition, as Dr. Carty pointed out, “For advice to be effective, there must be a receptor willing and able to use it.” Government must engage the scientific community as a whole, including the government's own scientists and the Professional Institute that represents them if it wishes to strengthen scientists' roles in the national S and T policy formulation and improve public science innovation capacity.
Finally, the government must align science and technology policy with economic policy. The government needs an economic policy that complements and reinforces science and technology policy. The institute is encouraged that the government has belatedly intervened in the proposed sale of the MacDonald Dettwiler Radarsat technology to an American firm, but it is struck by the government's apparent insensitivity to the vital importance of a nurturing economic and industrial environment in which to cultivate world leading science and technology. The government needs to mandate and invest in a national foresight program, with a network of S and T stakeholders who are capable of discerning long-term trends and informing decision-making.
